Short description
Tracks the image of the Jew as the murderer of the Messiah and God since its origins. This book focuses on the powerful myth that has driven so much murderous hatred.
Long description
The New Testament accounts of Jesus' crucifixion have stood at the bedrock of Christianity since it's birth in the 1st century, and they remain among the essential foundations of Western culture in the 21st. These Gospel narratives of the Passion - the arrest, trial, scourging, and execution of Jesus - cast the Jews as those responsible, directly and indirectly, for the death of their Messiah and the son of God. Cohen tracks the image of the Jew as the murderer of the Messiah and God from its origins to its most recent expressions. A great deal has been written about Christian anti-Semitism, its roots, and its horrific consequences in world history. This is the first book, however to focus on the powerful myth that has driven so much murderous hatred. An important addition to the literature on Jewish-Christian relations, it should appeal to a wide variety of readers in both communities.
Review
Cohen offers readers a lucid and sophisticated understanding of the age-old phenomenon of anti-Semitism. From its earliest history to Mel Gibson, Cohen explores the issues which have allowed this hateful notion to persist. It is a book which is fascinating, frightening, and important. It will be of interest to both the specialist and the lay reader. -- Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving
Jeremy Cohen shows exactly how the Christ-killer charge lodged, like a killer-virus, in the imagination of the West. Alas, he shows, also, how it remains a mortal problem for Christians, a threat to Jews -- a germ of further hatred. Meticulous truth-telling like Cohen's is the only antidote to this ancient plague. -- James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword and House of War
It would be hard to think of a more consequential myth in western history than that of the Jews as killers of Christ. Jeremy Cohen offers a highly readable examination of the myth from its inception almost two thousand years ago to its continued potent effects today. Replete with dozens of dramatic pictorial representations and making use of the latest scholarly research, Christ Killers offers absorbing, if chilling, reading. David I. Kertzer, author of The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and The Popes Against the Jews
Christ Killers is a gripping account of a myth that has profoundly shaped Christian-Jewish relations for two thousand years. Jeremy Cohen's command of the subject--from the Gospels to Mel's Gibson's Passion--is magisterial. --James Shapiro, author of Shakespeare and the Jews and Oberammergau